The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects

THE SWEET DREAD OF SCOTLAND

That’s one way Peter Ross, a contributor to the Scotsman, describes the country in a recent piece pegged to the start of 2013, which the government is calling the Year of Natural Scotland. “One can’t help but be wary of such things,” he writes. “[I]t is never comfortable on the receiving end of a sales pitch.” But, boy, does he sell the place in this essay, where he notes that only 2 percent of Scotland is urban and “30 percent is what we might call wild.” The wild side of the country has not always been appreciated for its beauty. Like so much wilderness, it has been an acquired taste, particularly up through the middle of the 1700s, when sensitive types began to value the sublime that lay beyond safety of home. Among them was J. M. W. Turner, “whose boiling, roiling Staffa oil describes the rough magic of Scottish landscape better, perhaps, than anyone before or since.” Scotland, Ross writes, never bares all; its wonder lies in “something glimpsed.” His meditation leads him to wonder, why does the landscape make us feel the way it does? It could be the landscape, or it could be us.